You Are My Family
by mercurialThoth
Summary: "Natasha, this is Laura." It was amazing how four simple words could send her world crashing down into the dust. The only person who she ever cared about was about to walk away and leave her on her own…again (Not exactly canon-compliant: in this Hawkeye joined SHIELD, met the Black Widow, and then met his future wife; the first chapter may undergo a re-write).


**Chapter 1**

"Natasha, this is Laura."

It was amazing how four simple words could send her world crashing down into the dust.

He just stood there, a smile on his face, his arm around the strange woman's shoulders. No…not a strange woman…_Laura_. This was the Laura she had been hearing about for weeks—the same woman who Barton was head-over-heels in love with.

The woman—Laura—was not armed, but she seemed to carry herself as someone who was used to the constant presence of danger. In a fight, she could probably last for a while. Like Barton, she—_Laura_—was relaxed in her presence, wore a smile on her face as she put out a hand to her.

Those details were not lost to Natasha in that split second after Barton spoke. But everything else was a sudden, painful blur.

_This is Laura._

When he first told her he met someone he actually wanted to marry, she thought he was joking. For as long as she had known him, Barton had never been in a relationship for long. In fact, their job usually required long hours in the field, making the establishment of a longtime relationship rather difficult. He would flirt now and then with the female agents they encountered on their various missions, but it had been out of boredom rather than anything else, and nothing ever came of it. Barton may have been a friendly person, but he was selective of his friends.

It had always been different between the two of them.

Alone on the field for sometimes weeks at a time, relying on just one another in certain death situations—it was almost a guarantee they would develop a closeness of sorts. When she first joined SHIELD she prepared herself for their routine to become so commonplace she might miss it if something were to disrupt their working together—she steeled herself against his eventual death, pictured him as someone necessary to complete a mission, nothing else.

After all, for years she had operated alone, completed her missions without establishing emotional connections to any of the people she sometimes encountered. She had been taught that emotions such as love and affection were a weakness; it robbed one of logical choice, clouded the mind when everything needed to be clear. The number one rule was simple: trust nobody.

But Barton became the one and only exception.

There was nobody else like him, after all. Who else but the mad archer—who carried a _bow_ into battle when his enemies held guns—would have dared to ask the assassin to become more than what the Red Room had intended her to be?

Even when she was beginning to think he had saved her for the sole purpose of becoming a new weapon for SHIELD, he surprised her after their first mission together by asking her if killing—even for SHIELD—was something she wanted to keep doing. More than that, he asked her if she wanted to leave the life of a spy, and told her if she did, he would help her create a new identity free of the bloodshed that she had not willingly chosen for herself.

It was stupid to think people had such free choice.

He could not just let an assassin as drenched in blood as she was simply walk away. Yet, a master at duplicity and the manipulation of emotions—she knew beyond a doubt he would fulfill his offer if she accepted…and it was partly that belief in his sincerity that made her decline to leave.

He had spoken of people worth protecting, of a life worth _having_ outside of what the Red Room had taught her—and though she had never believed it at the time of his impassioned speech following his decision to let her live—she understood him at once following his offer. She _knew_ there were people worth protecting.

She had just met one of them.

She would stay with SHIELD, and she would work—her whole life she had to—to make the ledger she carried with her white once more, if only to prove to herself there was something worth saving in that merciless assassin the Red Room had created. He had once seen something; maybe one day she would, too.

They both worked to wipe out the dark deeds of their past, kept one another from straying to far into the darkness of their work. Over time, it became so natural for them to depend on one another they did not even need to ask who they would be partnered with on a mission. They trusted nobody else as much as they did one another. He did not flirt mindlessly with her, and she did not hold him an emotional arm's-length. Over time, it still held true that the Black Widow had no friends. Barton surpassed that label.

But now he was going to marry this Laura, and leave their bloody business behind.

So it was only logical that he would have to leave her behind, too.

"Natasha?" Clint's voice broke into her thoughts.

She looked from him, to the woman. The smiles were still there, a little more unsure now in her silence. She could have retained that silence, walked away, do anything other than acknowledge the woman standing before her. But this meeting was important to Clint and she couldn't hurt him, despite how she felt about it. So she brought a smile to her face even as her heart broke.

"It's nice to finally meet you," she said. She put out her hand, the appropriate emotion coming to her face instinctively.

She was warm, friendly, human.

Fake.

* * *

A/N: I'm not entirely sure this chapter makes for clear reading; I may go over it later…or not…


End file.
